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Philosophy
The Right Way For Media Companies to Create Social Media Policies
Swimming in the roiling sea of online journalism, increasing numbers of newsrooms have decided to take up the challenge of articulating editorial policies for social media. Over the past year, news organizations from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to the BBC have issued protocols for staff on Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs and websites. Recently, the...
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Weblogs
Using the 'Steal-O-Meter' to Gauge if Stories Steal or Promote
In the recent dust-up between the Washington Post and Gawker, Post reporter Ian Shapira was upset when his story was excerpted on the media gossip blog Gawker. While blogs and even mainstream news articles have been quoting, excerpting and summarizing other stories and blog posts for years, there's never been accepted etiquette on how to do so. According to Shapira,...
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NewspaperShift
How Computer-Assisted Reporters Evolved into Programmer/Journalists
It wasn't until half-way through my journalism degree that I realized I wasn't going to be a traditional reporter. I wasn't even going to be a multimedia reporter. I was going to be a programmer/journalist. Putting a slash in your title makes you more important. I haven't been able to track down the first use of the phrase, but the...
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Business
What does journalism cost? That's a question that's being batted around a lot lately as the economic case for and against traditional newsrooms gets made in the press, on the web, and certainly across well-polished boardroom tables. In an article on J-Source, Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, argued that when the cost of news is sliced and...
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World View
Brave Citizen Journalists Provide New Images of Iranian Life
Like many people, I have been watching this so-called "Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, [Insert New Media Application] Revolution" unfold in Iran from the comfort of my own home. Watching the dizzying and horrifying images that have emerged on the Internet has triggered a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts. I was shocked and outraged by the death of Neda. I felt a...
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World View
How Will Iranian Protests Change Twitter?
There's been much ado about Twitter's role in the political protests in Iran, and for good reason. With the Iranian government expelling foreign journalists, outlets like CNN scrambled to uncover sources where they could. They found these sources among the din of unverifiable messages surfacing on Twitter. It's been fun reading mainstream media accounts of how Twitter is, in a...
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Weblogs
Media Criticism Flourishes Online, Putting Legacy Media Under Microscope
In November 2007, Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote a piece for the magazine chastising House Democrats for wording in their version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Not long after the column hit the web, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece arguing that "for the sake of its own credibility, Time Magazine needs immediately to prohibit Joe Klein...
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NewspaperShift
Kicking Ink: The Struggles of a Print Newspaper Unsubscriber
I knew the day was coming, but it was still a shock when the day came. Groggy-eyed in the early morning light, I slowly went down the four flights of stairs in the front of my building and looked down. Nothing. For 18 generally uninterrupted years, I had the San Francisco Chronicle delivered to me, except when neighbors stole...
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Public Relations
Issue Advocacy on the Internet, Part 1
The Internet has been alternately characterized as participatory, conversational, and collaborative. By empowering its users to create (not just consume) content, it is by design a more democratic medium than any other. There has been plenty of discussion about how, by giving everyone a public voice, the Internet is upending conventional power dynamics and enabling a new generation of opinion...
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Business
Live-Blogging RJI Symposium on New Tools, New Business Models
COLUMBIA, MO -- I am at the new Reynolds Journalism Institute building on the campus of the University of Missouri, my alma mater. It's interesting to be in a new building looking out on a campus that is so familiar and so different now. The mission of the RJI is to "develop and test ways to improve journalism through...
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EducationShift
Advice from the Pros to Journalism Graduates
It's an anxious time to be graduating from journalism school. The economy is in the tank and newsrooms are being decimated. But yet, it is also a great time to be a journalist, with more news and information available than ever before and more ways than ever to reach audiences. At the recent International Symposium on Online Journalism at...
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Digging Deeper
Building the Ideal Community Information Hub
Problem: Where can people find the local information they need, whether it's about a school board meeting, a new construction project or a nearby robbery? Solution: A community hub, with all the information aggregated in one online source and pushed out via libraries, in-person meetings, community radio, small run print publications and cable access TV. That's my conclusion after studying...
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BookShift
Glaser & Son Consider Pros and Cons of Kindle 2
I am what you might call the late early adopter. Rather than live on the bleeding edge, I wait safely until Version 2 comes out with the bugs and problems fixed. I got Windows 98 in '99, waited for the iPhone 3G, and checked out the Kindle 2 rather than 1. But when my e-book reader from Amazon arrived in...
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Philosophy
Farewell to the Tyranny of Reporters
When I give lectures about the future of journalism, recently I have been making reference to the weakening, if not the entire overthrow, of what I term The Dictatorship of the Writer. What I mean is simply that in the pre-Internet past reporters and writers of various sorts would nose about a subject and after a certain amount of research...
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Public Relations
In Hudson River Landing, PR Pros Were Not First Responders
In times of crisis, communications professionals have an important -- and increasingly complicated -- role to play. We used to be the first to offer public responses to catastrophes, able to develop elucidating messages before much of the news media was on the scene. Nowadays, the type of media that will report on a crisis is often as unforeseen as...
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Media Usage
How Forwarded Email Jokes, Hoaxes Evolved with Social Media
When I first ventured online in the late '90s, my in-box was constantly flooded with email forwards. Friends and co-workers alike tossed around lists of jokes, hoaxes and cautionary urban legends, pleas about a dying child in Idaho that needed your prayers or horror stories about human fingers discovered in fast food hamburgers. Today it seems that there are fewer...
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MarketingShift
Transparency as a PR Principle, Not a Tactic
We used to say in my profession -- public relations -- that you shouldn't say or write anything that you wouldn't want to turn up on the front page of the New York Times. Now what I like to tell clients instead is: You shouldn't say or write anything that you wouldn't want to turn up in Google search results....
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Social Networking
Dealing with Friend Inflation on Twitter, Digg
It happens several times a day now. Ever since I opened my Twitter account approximately three months ago, the follow alerts have been gradually increasing in frequency to the point that they clutter up my email inbox if I don't clean them out often enough. "Jessica Kositz (jkositz) is now following your updates on Twitter" my latest alert tells me,...
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Philosophy
Welcome to the Redesigned, Revamped MediaShift
After months of planning and hard work behind the scenes, we are proud to launch a new revamped MediaShift website -- call it MediaShift 2.0. The basic idea was to transform the one-person blog into an online magazine with more writers, more content and more input from you. In a survey of MediaShift readers, you told us clearly that you'd...
more »Digging Deeper
The Best 2008 Political Convention Coverage Online
In 2004, the major political conventions gave a few dozen bloggers press credentials, a historic moment for the new media outsiders. And this year, the political conventions have tried to be even more open to bloggers, video reporters, podcasters and new media. The Democratic convention credentialed 120 bloggers, and the GOP has credentialed 200 bloggers, according to Forbes. And the...
more »NewspaperShift
The Newspaper Blurb That Complained to Me
In my daily perusal of the ever-shrinking San Francisco Chronicle print newspaper, I noticed a little blurb tucked away on the front page of the Technology and Business section. Then a weird thing happened. The newspaper blurb actually started talking to me.
more »MagazineShift
How PaidContent Succeeded in Mining Digital Media Niche
Rafat Ali was just another freelance journalist back in 2002, and wanted to strut his stuff on a blog, so he started PaidContent to write about his take on the business of digital content. Now he is much richer for his efforts, having expanded the blog into a mini-media empire with venture funding and last week selling it entirely to Guardian Media Group for about $30 million.
more »Philosophy
A Moment of Unplugged Zen Poolside
The sun is beating down on me through hazy clouds and cool breeze. I'm sitting in a metal pool chair, perched at the edge of the water, with my feet dangling in. There's a fake palm tree nearby, giving me some shade and a spray of water to cool me.
The scene is far from quiet, as this is a sprawling kids swim park, with children of all ages swarming about, climbing stairs and coming down slides. Water is spurting all around, from water guns attached to turrets, from PVC pipes that open with the tug of ropes, from a very large bucket that sits atop the slide and pours out over everyone from time to time. As I watch my son and his cousins go up the stairs and down the slide, up the stairs and down the slide, up the stairs and down the slide, I slowly reach a state of quiet solitude.
more »MediaShift
MediaShift Looking for 'Embeds' at Newspaper, Radio, TV
As the redesign and revamp of the MediaShift site continues apace, I am looking for a few good folks to serve as correspondents for MediaShift, so I can get better insight into industries or worlds that I cover only occasionally. My hope is that with a group of 10 to 15 correspondents, I'll be able to give my community of readers and contributors more food for thought and interaction.
more »Philosophy
Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo
Microsoft made what appeared to be its last bid for Yahoo at $33 per share, and Yahoo wanted $37. Microsoft walked away. What a weird way for this entire drama to end -- if it is indeed over. Most people expect this to be a very bad week for Yahoo on Wall Street, with Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget...
more »AdvertisingShift
Why Paying People by Page Views is Wrong
Recently, Gawker Media, the blog empire run by Nick Denton, made two moves that were curious. One was spinning off three sites that weren't making the cut: Gridskipper (travel), Idolator (music), and Wonkette (politics). The other was slashing the pay-per-page-view rate for Gawker Media writers by 33%. In Denton's go-ahead-and-leak-it email memo, which showed up on Silicon Alley Insider,...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
'Blog Till You Drop' Phenomenon Overblown; Disconnecting Is Key
The New York Times recently published a story , "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop," that created a lot of buzz. The story told about bloggers who were literally working themselves to death. As if it were a quickly advancing trend, the Times' Matt Richtel declared, "a growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs,...
more »Philosophy
It's Time for Newsrooms to Walk the Talk of Change
Seems like nearly every day I get a notice in my in-box about a new conference, a new initiative, a new working group that will be looking at ways that traditional media can change with the digital times. For the most part, these programs have thoughtful people who sincerely want to help news organizations change. My worry is that they...
more »EducationShift
Last week, I had the honor of giving a speech at Arkansas State University, as part of their Lecture & Concert series -- at least, once I made it through the mechanical mayhem of American Airlines cancelling dozens of flights the same day I flew out. I also got to address a few classes in the College of Communications...
more »Media Usage
Can Electronics Stores Evolve in the Digital Age?
There's something almost laughable about shopping for digital cameras or television sets at typical big-box stores such as Target, Circuit City or Best Buy. You are usually greeted by row after row of devices, with very little explanation of how they are different -- perhaps with a few bullet points on a tag. And good luck getting someone to...
more »Philosophy
I struggle nearly every week with an identity problem: Am I a blogger or a journalist? Most times, I can take the easy way out and think of myself as the nouveau blogger/journalist or journalist/blogger -- but which one comes first? nags my inner pigeon-holer. Last week's blog post (or was it a long-form piece of journalism?) on MediaShift...
more »Your Take
Are Google and online advertising vulnerable to a recession?
As the U.S. moves into a possible economic slowdown, partially caused by the subprime mortgage meltdown, the question is whether the pain will spread to online advertising. Online ads have been booming since the dot-com bust ended around 2003, with 20%+ growth every year. When recession questions arose recently, many analysts believed online advertising would remain "recession-proof" because it's relatively...
more »Media Usage
When Did Computers Become the Life of the Party?
There was a time not so long ago when home computers sat on desks away from the main action in households. People used them for basic productivity tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets. Now, things have changed to the point where our home computers have become a center of our entertainment universe, offering up music, videos and photos....
more »Media Usage
How One Investor Used Social Media to Shake Up Yahoo
If you're following the twists and turns of Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo, you can't escape one name that keeps popping up in the media: Eric Jackson. As an activist shareholder in Yahoo, he has become the voice of the opposition, calling on Yahoo to accept Microsoft's takeover bid -- or any reasonable bid. Last year, he was instrumental...
more »Media Usage
The Pros, Cons and Weirdness of Microsoft-Yahoo
After years of rumors, it finally happened. On Friday, Microsoft made its buyout offer for Yahoo. But while that was expected to happen, as both companies have had trouble catching online advertising juggernaut Google, what wasn't so expected was that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would go all Murdoch on Yahoo with a hostile bid at a 62% premium over...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Why I Left Print Media for Digital
In new media circles, one of the hottest topics of recent years has been the print-to-digital shift. People pundit about it, shout "print is dead" and wallow in the sadness sparked by nostalgia for a day when this wasn't a question. We've also begun speculating on whether a device like the Kindle will really ever take our attention away...
more »Media Usage
The Efficiency (and Shame) of Long-Distance Reporting
My writer friend Marlene once had a dot-com job that seemed odd. She wrote for a travel site about various countries but never traveled to those countries. She simply aggregated information from other websites and did extensive online research before writing about them and putting together guides. But strange as it seemed at the time, I was destined to...
more »Weblogs
Blog Pundits Certain About Steve Jobs' Keynote
After the stunningly bad predictions by pollsters, pundits, commentators and anyone who graced a cable TV news studio before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, we decided to turn a fake news source, the fictional Online News Network (ONN), to tell us what Apple CEO Steve Jobs will tell everyone in his much anticipated speech tomorrow morning. The following is...
more »Philosophy
Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups
As a journalist covering a particular business, there is a temptation to believe that we know enough about that business to actually become a full participant in that business. We have been writing about it, we see what works and what fails, so we should know enough to try our hand at it too. But more often than not,...
more »Your Take
How important is digital media in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign?
As the U.S. presidential primary season quickly approaches, the question remains just how important the Internet and new media have been in the election race. While political tracking sites such as TechPresident can show how many Facebook friends the candidates have, or how many video views they've had on YouTube, there isn't a direct correlation between online popularity and actual...
more »Philosophy
Revamping the Story Flow for Journalists
Every time I sit down to write an in-depth story for MediaShift, I start getting that same sinking feeling: I'm missing something. Did someone else already write this story? Did I talk to all the right people? Did those people tell me everything I should know? Are my assumptions and story angle sound? Did I get all sides of...
more »Media Usage
How Cell Phones Are Killing Face-to-Face Interactions
Whether you are dating someone, interviewing someone, or just meeting someone for the first time, there is a special quality about face-to-face interactions. You can catch the subtle tone in their voice, see their expression as it changes from sad to outraged, and you can look them in the eye to see if you trust them. So it's unfortunate...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Even in U.S., Bloggers Get Little Protection
Earlier this year, there was a debate in journalism circles and in the general public about who could be considered a journalist, as San Francisco videoblogger and media maker Josh Wolf was jailed after refusing to turn over video footage to federal authorities. After spending 226 days in jail, Wolf was dubbed the "longest-jailed journalist in American history." But...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Our Internet Obsession with Missing People Goes Too Far
Reading online news is a great way to stay constantly updated on what's going on in the world without having to rely on television. And in times of great tragedy the Internet has shown itself to be incomparable in its ability to make information move quickly for the good of public awareness and safety. But for all its positive...
more »Open Source Reporting
EarmarkWatch.org Enables D.I.Y. Investigative Work
As professional journalists, we often believe that we have all the answers, or that we can find the knowledgeable source that has all the answers. When it comes to covering the workings of the U.S. Congress, journalists often rely on Congressional staffers or aides with inside information to find out what's going on. Or they follow the money through...
more »Philosophy
Why We Love (and Hate) Print Publications
In the course of any dinner conversation with friends or colleagues, the subject of media usually comes up, soon followed by The Question: When will print publications become obsolete? If the Internet gives us access to publications from around the globe on topics so diverse they couldn't possibly fit in a newsstand or our mailbox, why bother reading them...
more »Citizen Journalism
'People Searches' Let Everyone Investigate You
After being an online journalist for 12 years, I figure one of my specialties is doing investigations online about people I'm interviewing for stories I write. I want to know their background, where they've worked, where they live and whatever can give me relevant context for my interactions with them. But lately, I've noticed that my "people searching" skills...
more »Philosophy
Converged Devices Doesn't Mean Fewer Devices
In the last blog post, I looked at the 14 messages of new media, one of which was convergence. In today's blog post, I'd like to focus on convergence and hybrid technologies, which characterize today's new media. Let's begin by exploiting a McLuhan technique known as the laws of media, in which we identify what a new medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into Hybrid technologies enhance convenience, obsolesce many individual devices, retrieve the Swiss Army knife, and reverse into clutter.
more »Philosophy
New media have certainly changed the landscape of communications and education in an even more dramatic manner than electronic mass media did as was documented and analyzed by "Marshall McLuhan" in 1964. I had the good fortune to collaborate with Marshall back in the 1970s and have tried to carry on his tradition, as have others, by focusing on the impact of media independent of their content. McLuhan's pithy way of describing this approach was through the use of his one-liner "the medium is the message," which he made famous in his '64 book "Understanding Media."
more »Social Networking
Social Media Runs on 'Friend' Power
I've been thinking a lot lately about friends, and the shifting definition of friends within online social networks such as "MySpace", "Facebook" and "LinkedIn." There was a time in the not-so-distant pre-web past when I considered a friend to be someone who had my back, someone I could go to for advice or help, someone I considered a trusted ally.
more »Philosophy
10 Reasons There's a Bright Future for Journalism
There's been a lot of debate lately about the future of newspapers, the future of TV, the future of radio -- the future of journalism itself -- in the face of drastic change brought by technology and the Internet. I've asked MediaShift readers whether they thought journalism's metaphorical cup was half empty or half full and most people saw...
more »Digging Deeper
New Media Literacy as Important for Educators as Students
For so long, the focus of media literacy education has been on helping students understand the media they consume. What are the biases? Who owns what outlet? How are news reports produced? But with the rise of new media, perhaps the focus of media literacy education should shift to educating the educators -- and other adults -- about blogs,...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Reporting from Afar Might Work, But Not for Local News
While much has been made of the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries, until recently the field of journalism had remained largely untouched. Earlier this month local news website Pasadena Now announced its decision to outsource work to India, specifically reporting of City Council meetings. The site's owner, James Macpherson, said the meetings are streamed on the Internet,...
more »Philosophy
No Matter the Format, Interviews Are Not Dying
When you're a career journalist, you often find yourself getting into the deep groove of habit. A story breaks and you approach your known sources on the subject. You call them up for a comment or drop them an email query. But as I re-examine so many ingrained practices of journalism here at MediaShift, I wonder if the habitual...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
U.S. Media Fails to Deliver Spanish News Online
Here in the United States, with over "31 million Spanish speakers", you would think Spanish would be our second language online. And you would think that content for the Spanish-speaking community would be not only available, but also rich and varied, if only for the value it represents to marketers. But that isn't the case.
more »Legal Drama
Digg Users Show Strength in Numbers in DVD Dust-Up
The community-generated news site, Digg, has been an experimental hothouse for online communities. Last summer, there was the move by Netscape to offer to pay top Diggers to do their news-article bookmarking at Netscape, with Digg CEO Jay Adelson saying he'd never pay Digg community members. Now comes the user revolt after Digg decided to remove posts that mentioned...
more »Your Take Roundup
Mixed Feelings on NBC Showing Cho Video Online
The folks at NBC News debated for hours what to do with the video they had received from Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus. Eventually, they decided it was prudent to show some of the video on TV and post some snippets online. After an outcry against glorifying the killer, MSNBC decided to stop...
more »Citizen Journalism
Can Media Get Beyond Reactive Response to Tragedy?
After the shootings at Virginia Tech, much of the initial reaction on the Internet followed the familiar rhythm of disaster reporting in recent years. First, the point is made that it is now more likely for an average person to be at a tragic hot spot with a cell phone or Net connection. Next, the story is naturally picked up, either directly or independently, by a traditional media outlet. Finally, the advocates of citizen media claim victory while the actual story is still bleating. Rob Walker first noticed this in Slate in March 2001, when the denizens of MetaFilter first noticed an earthquake. New media triumphalism is now professionalized, and the major journalism studies programs all contribute to it.
more »Digging Deeper
Your Guide to Presidential Campaign Videos Online
Candidates running for the U.S. presidency in 2008 have made use of online resources more than ever. With the rise of online video and YouTube, candidates have started to upload formal and informal videos online, and potential voters have tried to engage them in video dialogues.
more »Philosophy
Offline or Online, Civility Depends on Each Community's Tolerance
Lately, the crass nature of talk radio and the blogosphere has been Topic A in the media. Shock jock Don Imus has been fired by CBS Radio and MSNBC TV for his racially charged comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. And publisher/blogger Tim O'Reilly has called for a Blogger's Code of Conduct after blogger Kathy Sierra was the...
more »EducationShift
Journalism Education Stuck in Same Oldthink Mode as Big Media
When I visited the campus of Ball State University recently, I was struck by the number of innovative programs the school had carried out, from a live interactive TV local broadcast to its converged newsroom. Ball State is also home to the well endowed Center for Media Design, which conducted one of the most comprehensive (and expensive) usage studies,...
more »Philosophy
The Working Journalist in the Age of the Internet
First things first: The most important thing for you to do is find work that you love, that you have a passion for. Don't take a job because it's what your parents want or for the money. My dad and uncles are all lawyers, and they assumed that when I was in journalism school that I would just eventually become a lawyer later. Uh, no.
more »Philosophy
Serious Journalism Won't Die as Newsprint Fades
I was reading my local newspaper today -- yes, I still read it in print -- and came upon this unfortunate passage in an otherwise nice report on a maverick newspaper publisher in rural California: "With classified advertising usurped by the Internet, newspapers across the country are facing mounting losses and, in many cases, cuts in staff and resources....
more »Philosophy
Old Media Company Swears It Really Gets the Web
LOS ANGELES (Goiters) -- Management at the Los Angeles Herald-Gazette newspaper today unveiled an earth-shattering initiative to combine operations of the newspaper and its Internet site -- a change that was crucial to ensuring that the Herald-Gazette appears to finally "get" the web.
more »Your Take Roundup
PaidContent Crowd: This Ain't No Dot-Com Bubble
I attended the PaidContent San Francisco mixer event last night at the Palace Hotel, and was impressed with the packed house of 500 to 600 folks, from journalists to marketers to startup company executives. The room was buzzing, and brought back memories of the last dot-com boom in the '90s when parties and mixers seemed to happen every night at exotic locales.
more »MusicShift
Music Industry Losing Control Over Album Sales
Why is the retail price of a new music CD $15.98? Where does this price come from and how is it set? Is it fair? For a long time, I've wondered about the high price of music, especially when bought in physical form as a compact disc. As longtime music buyers, we have a certain mindset about the CDs...
more »MusicShift
A Heated Conversation with the iPhone
Last night, I was visited in a dream by the new Apple iPhone, which strangely enough I was able to converse with. The phone hovered above my head vaporously, its disembodied voice coming out of the speaker in silky, hushed tones. This is what I can remember from the conversation.
more »Citizen Journalism
Saddam Cell Video Subverts News Packages
There's a certain predictability and glossiness to news "packages," special reports on breaking news that journalists knew were going to happen ahead of time. So when a pope dies after a long illness, the U.S. invades Iraq after a long runup to war, or the Democrats are sworn into power in Congress, you know there will be spiffy graphics, an on-the-scene reporter, and even an original musical intro on CNN.
more »MagazineShift
You Deserve More Than Time's Person of the Year
I've had two strong reactions to the big news that Time magazine had chosen "you" as their Person of the Year for 2006. My first reaction is utter amazement that people at Time magazine -- or perhaps, some people -- are starting to understand the digital media revolution, the growing power of average people who can now control and create their own media experience.
more »Philosophy
Internal Company Memos Make Online Fodder for Yahoo
Lately, there has been a lot of intrigue at new media conglomerate Yahoo. Most average folks use Yahoo for the email or perhaps the personalized portal, My Yahoo, or maybe the fantasy football leagues. Largely, Yahoo makes its money with advertising, though most of the content isn't created by Yahoo itself.
more »Social Networking
MySpace May Be Worth $0 in Three Years
SAN FRANCISCO (Goiters) - MySpace, the social networking Web site, could be worth around $0 within three years, measured in terms of the value created for shareholders of parent company News Corp. , according to a media analyst forecast on Wednesday.
more »NewspaperShift
The Case for Citizen Ownership of the Los Angeles Times
Corporate ownership of daily newspapers is reaching the breaking point, especially now at the Los Angeles Times, which is owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company media conglomerate. The newspaper is facing the same problem that hundreds of other newspapers are facing: Owners and stockholders who want profit growth each year, who want to cut back on editorial staff, and who could care less about the communities and people who actually read and gain insight from the newspaper. And there's that massive problem of people reading dead-tree edition newspapers less and reading electronic online versions more -- leading to smaller profits at the moment.
more »Social Networking
Why Participants Matter in Online Communities
It must be fun to play God as the owner of an online community or social networking site. You have millions of people who "live" on your website, and with each feature or new technical wrinkle, you are changing the way they live their lives online. But with that power comes responsibilities, and when those responsibilities are forgotten, the community rebels and leaves you in the dust.
more »Citizen Journalism
Reliving 9/11 Without Glitz of Big Media
Today is September 11, and the date 9/11 will seemingly forever be linked to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001. I kept hearing on NPR News yesterday that the memorials for 9/11 had already started a day earlier on 9/10. I dreaded this day, especially as a media watcher, because I knew the mainstream media would turn the 5th anniversary of 9/11 into another spectacle, complete with theme music, glitzy graphics and teary made-for-TV melodramas.
more »Philosophy
Your Own Views of the Media Shift
A couple weeks ago, I was trying to come up with a way to sum up some of the many concepts I've been illustrating on this blog. How could I do that in a simple, catchy way? The result was the Oldthink vs. Newthink post, where I simply listed the old ways of doing things in media and the new ways that were being explored.
more »Legal Drama
Hate Site Horrendous, But Blocking Through ISPs Faulty
A case unfolding in Canada and the U.S. exemplifies all that is terrible and difficult about free speech on the Internet. Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress have asked the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) -- similar to the FCC -- to direct Internet service providers in Canada to block two hate sites based in the U.S. Warman says the sites, run by white supremacist Bill White of Roanoke, Va., contain "an actual call to murder myself and all Canadian Jews," according to an article by the Canadian Press.
more »Philosophy
The media world is going through a time of wrenching change brought on by new technology, the rise of the Internet and folks getting fed up with the corporate mass media losing touch with their reality. How can a mega-chain of newspapers, a TV broadcast conglomerate, or a cookie-cutter radio system interpret what's going on in your neighborhood? And in the world of entertainment, the big companies are more concerned with prosecuting file-traders than helping create easy digital avenues for customers to get what they want when they want it.
more »Digging Deeper
Church 2.0: Does a Congregation Know More Than the Pastor?
Sunday morning was bright and warm, as we walked toward the auditorium in South San Jose, Calif. Before we reached the door, we were handed a Polaroid camera and told to photograph ourselves and pass on the camera to the next person coming in. We took the photo, and went inside the building, where there was coffee, bagels and donuts.
more »Philosophy
Balancing Work and Play on Summer Vacation
I promised myself (and you, dear readers) that I would take a real summer vacation this year, and try my best to unplug from technology, from work, from my usual mode of media overload.
more »NewspaperShift
Open Letter to the Times::Mr. Sulzberger, Tear Down This (TimesSelect) Wall!
An Open Letter to New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Chairman Sulzberger, if you seek peace in cyberspace, if you seek prosperity for your company, if you seek to spread ideas online: Come here to this TimesSelect gate! Mr. Sulzberger, tear down this pay wall! I understand the fear of losing print subscribers to a free website at...
more »Media Usage
Screen Babies::What Do Kids Lose, Gain from Screen Time?
It's easy to get angry and self-righteous when hearing the results of a study like the recent one from the Kaiser Family Foundation about young kids' media usage. The facts come spewing off your tongue as if you're a preacher in a room full of sinners: 61% of babies aged 1 year or younger watch screen media (TV, videos,...
more »Weblogs
Get a Life::Fighting Blog Obsession
When I first started blogging in January, I had a sneaky suspicion that this blog might become a bit of an obsession. Here's what I wrote then: "But now, finally, in 2006, I am ready to turn my life over to the blog. I hope it doesn't eat my wife and son, chew through my assorted leisure activities, and...
more »MovieShift
Rethinking Theaters::Explode the Multiplex, and Let the Community In
I probably go to see a movie at a theater about once every other week. But with each passing month, I realize just how stale this experience is. Just how broken it is. And I'm not surprised to see that the overall U.S. movie box office revenue was down 6% in 2005. As I start to gain control of...
more »TVShift
CNN Everywhere::Do We Need TV in Public Spaces?
I spent the past week on a work vacation of sorts in Austin, Texas, which is a good thing. But one annoying thing was when I was stuck in an airport, and couldn't tune out the ubiquitous TV monitors blaring the CNN Airport Network. As a longtime news junkie, I used to consider this TV broadcast in airports to...
more »TVShift
Dear CBS Sportsline::Close Down Live Streams of Tourney for Our Own Good
Open Letter to CBS Sportsline Dear Keepers of the March Madness Tournament Flame, We the college basketball-loving public appreciate all you've done for us. You offer satellite packages with all the games in the men's college basketball tournament. We can go to Las Vegas and watch and bet on all the games. And now, in your crowning moment, you've...
more »Weblogs
Blog Obsession::I Am a Technorati Addict
When I started this blog, I was worried that it would take over my life. What I didn't know at the time was that the blog wasn't the only thing that would take over. Now, when I log on each day, it's not just to read comments on the blog or write something for it. I also must make...
more »Social Media
Blogging is a funny thing. Weblogs, those online diaries that run in reverse chronological order, are just like any other new technological advance: more people have heard of them than have actually read them or written them. My Aunt Bobby, when she heard that I was writing about blogs, would say, "Gosh, those conservative bloggers are sure stirring up a...
more »Philosophy
The Revolution Will Not Be Advertised
It's a hot, muggy day in the Not-So-Deep South, unusual for the winter time. They're packed in to the rafters at the First Community Gospel Church of Interdenominational Mumbo-Jumbo. After a few opening hymns, a hush goes over the congregation, as mothers sternly "shush" their squirming children, while waving fans rapidly to keep the sweat off their faces. The...
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